


Beholder

by Defiler_Wyrm



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Love Confessions, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Bucky Barnes, Post-Black Panther (2018), Rating May Change, Wakanda, White Wolf Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 14:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14498670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defiler_Wyrm/pseuds/Defiler_Wyrm
Summary: In the sanctuary of Wakanda, the White Wolf begins to heal.





	Beholder

“So this is it,” Bucky sighs, gesturing around them, “home sweet home. Got that little place with a view we always talked about, some sweet checks from the VA, no one bothering me. Just peace and quiet.”

Steve follows the gesture in a wide, scanning gaze. Before them stands a one-room hut with a curtain for a door, little patches of grassland tilled into gardens, and the lazy guardianship of a single goat. His expression wavers in the corner of Bucky’s eye.

“You weren’t kidding about the view,” Steve allows with his voice pitched up to show he's in on the joke.

For all its simplicity—surpassing even that of their old coldwater flat in Brooklyn Heights—the river and surrounding forest are breathtaking. Bucky’s plot is in view of the city across the water, with its towering spires and the great stone panther that overlooks Wakanda with the eyes of a sleeping god. He gets to look at that every day. And every day, he gets to try not to imagine a great grey bridge across it.

It’s almost the best part of the day. Bucky flashes his friend a watery smile and jerks his head toward the water. Steve follows him to a tree with sprawling branches, but squawks when Bucky grabs one and hauls himself up into its boughs.

“Come on up,” Bucky grins down at him. “It’s no fourteenth-story roof but it’s the best view around here. C’mon, stop staring up my shuka and get up here, it’ll hold.”

Steve’s face flushes at being teased, just like always. The stubbly beginnings of a beard that mottled the red are new, though. Wonders never cease. Steve hauls himself up after Bucky, and then onto the next branch after that, and the next after that, always waiting patiently while Bucky drags his bulk along one-armed.

“Seems to me like this would be a lot easier with two arms,” Steve deadpans as they sit.

Bucky shrugs his good shoulder. “We’ve been over this, man. I just...need some time to not be anyone’s weapon.”

“I respect that.” Steve pats him firmly on the same shoulder, even though he has to reach all the way across Bucky’s back to do so. It leaves a line of warmth in its wake.

“But you’re still prefer me out there with you.” Bucky doesn’t  look up. He shouldn’t pick at this thread but he just can’t help it. “I know you’re probably right but I’m just….”

The launch codes are gone now. He can hear the words and come out the other side with no worse than a panic attack. Therapy twice weekly is helping, too; he’s made a lot of headway. But it’s only been a month since he was defrosted. It’s just….

“It’s too soon,” Steve says, kindly. “It’s your choice, Buck, and I promised to go along with whatever you wanted to do.”

“It’s not necessarily what I want, Steve,” Bucky huffs, “it’s what I  _ need _ . I wanna be there for you but I need to know I can be your rock.”

Steve nudges Bucky’s shoulder (the bad one, only he’s not supposed to call it bad, because it’s still part of him no matter what it’s made from). “I get it. I do, I swear. And I’m not upset with you.”

“You’re disappointed.”

Silence stretches between them for just enough of a moment for Bucky’s nerves to start firing up, but it’s only Steve gathering his thoughts.

“I’m only disappointed that I can’t stay here with you,” he finally says.

His hand lands on Bucky’s knee. Bucky finds himself wishing, ferociously, that he had another hand to lay atop it. Instead he leans into his friend and wills himself not to say the obvious:  _ you could if you really wanted to. _

“You know,” Bucky says instead, “they say the sunsets in Wakanda are the most beautiful in the world.”

“That so,” Steve hums. “I guess pretty soon here we’ll find out.”

Bucky lets himself smile. “Oh I already know, pal.”

This favorite perch of his faces west with almost no branches in the way. The sky starts to purple like an emerging bruise as the sun sinks down to kiss the horizon, and the river erupts into glittering lights like a field of diamonds. They sit in silence and watch what few Americans have ever been so blessed to see.

“It is stunning,” Steve admits quietly. He’s probably thinking about trying to paint it, Bucky figures. He’d use oils and work like a madman to try to recreate the divine brilliance of the sky before the sun sank low enough to extinguish it all and left him moaning, knowing he’d never see that one again. He’d sit by the river banks one sunset after another until he reached a compromise and painted a conglomerate. It would be breathtaking and sell for half a million dollars and Steve would swear for the rest of his life that he failed to do it justice.

He knows how this guy’s mind works.

But he’d have to stay for any of that to happen.

Bucky takes a deep breath. “The most beautiful sunset I can remember was in 1932, the Fourth of July. We pulled some crazy stunts to get our hands on the most expensive cheap-ass whiskey ever,” (here Steve starts chuckling as he remembers, too) “and got up on a roof in Red Hook to watch the fireworks, but we got there early. We passed that...nasty bottle of rotgut back and forth, trying to act like we liked it—”

Now both of them were giggling and leaning against each other, much as they had that afternoon. 

“You swore to me it’d put hair on my chest,” Steve accuses.

“I thought it would!” Bucky snickers back. “How was I s’posed to know it was a myth? I was fourteen, pal, I didn’t know shit about fuck.”

“I could’a told you that.”

If they were on the ground Bucky would have tackled him for that remark. “You  _ did _ tell me that, repeatedly. But I did know one thing.”

Steve struggles to stuff his laughter back inside. “Oh yeah, what’s that?”

Bucky stares out at the water, teeth worrying his lower lip. When he speaks again it’s pitched more softly—even his words tread carefully here.

“I knew it was the most beautiful sunset I’d ever seen because of the way the sun made you look like you were made of gold. It caught in your eyes and made them look like fire, and it made you smile look like something that ought’a be in a museum I couldn’t afford to go into. I looked at all that and that’s...that was when I knew.” He swallows thickly, steels himself, and looks at Steve. “What’s when I knew.”

Steve’s face is rapt and lit by blazing sunlight, a golden lion with eyes of  flame. His lips glisten where he’s wetted them with his tongue, and for a moment Bucky can’t tear his eyes off where they’re parted.

“Knew what, Bucky?” Steve whispers.

He tries to say it. He really does. It’s pathetic how long he’s thought about this, how many times he’s rehearsed this. It’s pathetic how long he denied it when all it took was four therapy sessions to get the words tumbling from his lips as he sobbed on a couch. But this was different.

There’s a difference, Bucky thinks, between saying a prayer and speaking to God face-to-face.

So he whispers back, “You know,” and leans in for a kiss eighty-five years overdue.

May all the saints and Mary too have mercy on his sinning soul, but never in his life has Bucky felt the hand of the divine so much as now. Steve stays still for a terrifying moment, but soon melts into the kiss: both hands cup Bucky’s face, petting through his hair and tracing the ridge of his brow as their lips move against each other. Bucky parts his lips in invitation; that’s all Steve needs to deepen it by slipping him tongue.

“Oh God,” Steve pants, voice cracked and desperate, “oh God, I love you too.”

Bucky’s eyes sting. Wetness tracks down his cheeks, only for Steve to kiss them away. “Then stay with me. Please.”

It’s excruciating when Steve pulls away. At least he keeps his hands on Bucky’s face. “Buck, sweetheart, you know I can’t. Not yet.”

“Then stay the night.” Bucky steels his balance so he can wrap his remaining hand around Steve’s where it cradles him. “Stay with me tonight. I’ve got a lot of making up to do.”

His heart patters out  _ Please say yes, please say yes, please say yes. _

Steve smiles, and it outshines the sun. “Lead the way.”

They kiss once more before they descend, and hold hands as they meander back to Bucky’s hut.

“You know something, you were right,” Steve says. “That really  _ was _ the most beautiful sunset in the world.”

Steve Smiles at him again, and Bucky’s face hurts from grinning back, and they take the rest of the journey to his hut at a run.

**Author's Note:**

> Bear with me, folks. I'm Upset after Infinity War and this is just gonna be a revolting amount of fluff to try to make myself feel better.


End file.
